Thursday, June 9, 2016

Summer DVR Dump: Heroes Reborn 1.01: “Brave New World”

“Memories are funny things. The good ones fill your life with context, with clarity while other memories can deceive. The ones that make you believe you know the truth, they’re the dangerous ones.”
- Noah Bennett

So like a lot of good shows, I came to “Heroes” late in life. In fact, I binged the whole series this past August in preparation for this show. So I’m quite excited to see if the writers get back to the fun that was season 1 of the original. As the premiere starts, we meet a familiar face, one Noah Bennett. He’s heading to Odessa, Texas for an Evo-Human summit. He’s not spoken to Claire in several years (probably not since she jumped off a Ferris wheel at the Sullivan Brother’s carnival on national TV and outed herself as an Evo). He’s hoping to see Claire at the summit but things go horribly wrong. There’s an explosions and thousands are killed, including we later learn Claire. We then cut to three months after the attack to find a young man in Canada who can turn invisible being chased by a patrol and then a guy who can fly in China a few months after that. We meet Tommy who is just a poor high school kid whose Mom is trying to take him to Canada to be safe but they turn around when they see a guy get Tasered.

On the anniversary date of the attack, Tommy and several of the other people we met briefly gather at a church for kind of a support group meeting. Tommy was hoping for some tips on how to control powers but he’s not in luck. He does get out before the shooting starts. One guy, Luke (played by Zachary Levi) explains that his young son was killed during the attack and so he guns everyone down and sets the church on fire. There’s someone watching over Tommy though so at least he can’t be tied to the church for the police. But he’s got more normal teenage problems. He likes a girl who has a boyfriend on the football team and the guy is kind of jerk to Tommy. Poor kid.

We head briefly to Austin, Texas where we find Noah, going by the name Ted Barnes, working as a car salesman. If you’ve seen the original, you know that was his job before he started getting involved with Primatech and the Evos. It’s quite obvious he doesn’t remember Claire at all which makes me think he had the Haitian wipe his memory. Time will tell. As it turns out he still has most of his memory and Quentin (one of the guys from the little bridge online mini-series) is following him. He needs Noah to know that the number of Evos is growing and Mohinder isn’t a terrorist. This prompts Noah to check some old items he’s got stashed away and it looks like he may be taking a trip to an eye doctor. I still think the Haitian is involved.

And before we head back to Tommy, we meet Miko, a young woman in Japan who is a gamer. Another guy named Ren shows up claiming to have found the address in a video game before she kicks him out. I have a feeling that she is either Hiro Nakamura’s daughter or his friend Ando’s daughter. Either way she’s likely develop powers. Ren returns claiming that she is “Katana Girl” but she kicks him out again. It still doesn’t stop her from questioning if it’s true. She ventures into her father’s study, finds the sword and is somehow transported to a video game where she now has to try to rescue her missing father. This just makes me all the more confident her dad is Hiro (the “Katana Girl” book looked like it had an older photo of Ando on the back).

Oh and we’ve met a guy named Carlos who is a war vet and it seems he’s not an Evo. He’s back visiting his family, including his nephew who is a big fan of a masked vigilante who is protecting the neighborhood. We see the guy in action but he gets shot and has to take off. I’m kind of curious to see if Carlos is linked to it at all. As it turns out, Carlos’s brother, Oscar is in fact the vigilante. Unfortunately, he dies from his wounds, leaving Carlos to look after young Jose. And much like we learned in the original series, powers are genetic. Carlos may not realize it yet but he has super hearing. And Jose can move through solid objects. Poor Tommy just isn’t having much luck with trying to be normal and fit in. He gets a job at the local ice cream shop but finds Luke waiting for him. He doesn’t realize at first that Luke is dangerous until his wife shows up with a gun. Tommy ends up making them disappear (but he doesn’t know where) and the cute girl he likes convinces him his secret is safe with her. He doesn’t have to run anymore.

Noah heads to Austin to check out the eye glasses place and who should he find but the Haitian! I knew he would show up sooner or later. Unfortunately, I was also right that Renee wiped something from Noah’s mind, including the command to kill Noah if he ever showed up again. This sadly result sin Noah shooting Renee. At least Noah is really broken up about killing his old friend. But apparently there’s something coming and Noah wasn’t supposed to remember? That part still doesn’t make a lot of sense but we end the episode with a voice over probably from the original voice over person (who I still think sounds a heck of a lot like Mohinder) about what’s coming and that the heroes might be able to stop it. We see a young woman standing on a beach and she’s controlling what looks like the Northern Lights. But there’s something going very wrong and she says she can’t hold it back much longer. That’s definitely one hell of a way to end the premiere episode.

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